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Latest Developments, June 20

Grand corruption Le Monde reports on new allegations concerning millions of dollars said to have been funneled from former Libyan ruler Muammar Gadhafi to ex-French President Nicolas Sarkozy:

“According to Mediapart, two of these offshore companies received, in 2007 and 2008, money from kickbacks on Libyan security contracts linked to the French company Amesys. In his email, Ismail also stresses that the ‘agreement’ to free the detained Bulgarian nurses in 2007 ‘involved Libya’s purchase of a nuclear reactor from [French state-owned] Areva and the supply of Milan missiles to the Libyan army.’ He also says that ‘one of Sarkozy’s primary concerns was to sell the Rafale fighter jet for more than 2 billion euros.’ ” [Translated from the French.]

No arms Embassy magazine reports that a new poll shows that only a “small, small minority” of Canadians want their government to help arm Syrian rebels:

“Six in 10 adult Canadians, or 60 per cent, said they disagreed that Canada should supply Syrian rebels with military aid, according to a June 18 Forum Research Inc. poll whose results were offered to Embassy. Roughly one fifth of respondents, or 18 per cent, said they agreed, while roughly one quarter, 22 per cent, said they did not have an opinion.”

Minor casualty McClatchy reports on the alleged killing of a 10-year-old boy by a US drone, an incident that prompted one local sheikh to ask, “What did Abdulaziz do? Was this child a member of al Qaida?”:

“Some analysts argue that this and other strikes run counter to the administration’s claims of improved targeting. [The boy’s brother, Saleh Hassan Huraydan] might have been a local al Qaida leader, they say, but it’s unclear whether he constituted a ‘continuing and imminent threat to the American people,’ Obama’s definition of a legitimate target. ‘The number of U.S. drone strikes over the past two years suggests that the U.S. is going after many more targets than just the 10 to 15 individuals it says represent imminent threats to U.S. national security. It appears to be going after whomever it can hit whenever it can find them,’ said Gregory Johnsen, the author of ‘The Last Refuge,’ a recent book on al Qaida in Yemen. ‘The new rules that Obama alluded to in his speech last month either aren’t yet in effect in Yemen or are making no difference,’ he added.”

Nuclear pledge The New York Times reports that American President Barack Obama’s promise this week to reduce his country’s nuclear arsenal and “seek negotiated cuts with Russia to move beyond cold war nuclear postures” is running into skepticism in several camps:

“The proposal to limit American and Russian deployed strategic warheads to about 1,000 each would bring the two countries back to around the levels of 1954, experts said. The president also vowed to work with NATO to reduce the unrestricted smaller tactical nuclear weapons still in Europe and to push the Senate to finally ratify the 17-year-old Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. Taken together, the moves revived the effort Mr. Obama began in Prague in 2009 to put the world on a path to eventually eliminating nuclear weapons, one of the most idealistic, if hotly disputed, aspirations of his first term. Yet even as Republicans argued that he was going too far at the risk of national security, his moves represented a more modest step than many arms control advocates had sought.”

Mining aid The Globe and Mail reports that the minister in charge of the Canadian International Development Agency told a meeting of Canada’s mining industry representatives that he is working to help them take advantage of the “huge opportunities” in poor countries:

“In his comments to the Mining Association of Canada, [Julian] Fantino dismissed criticism of the government’s strategy and praised the Canadian extractive industry’s work. ‘Your industry is a leader, internationally, and we want to help you succeed,’ he said. Last fall, Canada established the Canadian International Institute for Extractive Industries and Development, which is meant to help developing countries establish policies to better govern their mining sectors. The institute ‘will be your biggest and best ambassador,’ Mr. Fantino told mining representatives on Wednesday, adding that it would draw on Canadian success in the mining industry and share lessons from Canada with other countries.”

Dune mining Radio France Internationale reports that Senegalese farmers see an Australian company’s plans to mine zircon as bad news:

“A vast mining program was launched three months ago along the Grande Côte. In Casamance, in the country’s south, Australian-based Carnegie Minerals obtained an exploration permit. The company hopes to mine close to 5 million tons of minerals. But it is running into local opposition.” [Translated from the French.]

Too big to exist The Guardian’s Joris Luyendijk argues that his interviews with hundreds of people working in London’s financial sector have convinced him that the industry is not no much out of control as “beyond control”:

“Before studying bankers I spent many years researching Islam and Muslims. I set out with images in my mind of angry bearded men burning American flags, but as the years went by I became more and more optimistic: beyond the frightening rhetoric and sensationalist television footage, ordinary Muslim people go about their day like all other human beings. The problem of radical Islam is smaller and more containable than Islamophobes believe. With bankers I have experienced an opposite trajectory. I started with the reassuring images in my mind of well-dressed bankers and their lobbyists; surely at some basic level these people knew what they were doing? But after two years I feel myself becoming deeply pessimistic and genuinely terrified. This system is highly dysfunctional, deeply entrenched, and enormously abusive, both to its own workers and the society it operates in. The problem really is exactly as bad as the ‘banker bashers’ believe.”

Carbon discredited FERN and Friends of the Earth have released a new report that uses the example of the highly touted N’hambita carbon offset project in Mozambique to argue that the EU should not fund such schemes:

“Sylvain Angerand from Friends of the Earth France explains: ‘A fundamental problem, which this report highlights, is that emissions stay in the atmosphere longer than trees stay standing. This report shows that carbon offsetting has few climate benefits and is a dangerous distraction from the need to cut emissions and reduce consumption.’ ”